RRR - Randall's Review Room

"Dragged Across Concrete" Where I watched it: Tubi Another intense film by S. Craig Zahler. While this one maintains all of the trademarks of an S. Craig Zahler film (extreme violence, practical effects, ever-present tension) it might be his most challenging film yet, for a couple of reasons. The first reason is its pacing. The film is almost 3 hours long and it moves very slowly. Most of the movie in fact is dialogue. Don't get me wrong, it's engaging dialogue but some viewers might not have the patience for it depending on what headspace they're in while watching it. The second reason is that basically everyone in this movie is a huge piece of shit. The main characters played by Mel Gibson (real life piece of shit) and Vince Vaughn are terrible, abusive, crooked cops. The film starts with the two of them using excessive force on a suspect of visible minority in a way that will ring all too familiar for a lot of viewers. We follow these two a-hole cops on a heist...

"Brawl in Cell Block 99" Where I watched it: Tubi Years ago I saw a film called "Asylum Blackout." It premiered at TIFF under a different name, I think it was called "The Incident." It was one of my favorites of that year. A few years later, I stumbled upon a hidden gem called "Bone Tomahawk." Little did I know that these two films had something in common: S. Craig Zahler. Now, many years after seeing either of the aforementioned I decided to see what Zahler had to offer in a non-horror concept, which brings us to "Brawl in Cell Block 99." I have to say, this film is a hard sell right off the bat with its clunky title, awful poster featuring a bald Vince Vaughn, and the fact that it's on Tubi. It feels like it's going to be one of those straight to VOD movies that you'd see Bruce Willis in (bless his soul). But you'd be foolish to let all of that prevent you from seeing this film. This film follows a recovering alcoholic...

"Where the Crawdads Sing" Spoiler alert: no crawdads sing. A murder mystery romance drama set in the marshlands of North Carolina. I definitely enjoyed this movie even though it's nothing groundbreaking... but I was shocked to see it's 34% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (albeit the audience rating is 97%.) It's engaging in its murder mystery plot and has a lot of strength in its character development of the protagonist, Kya. Daisy Edgar-Jones does a great job in this although I think they should have cast someone else for her teen years as she didn't really look the part. The romance plot has some extreme highs and lows. Its joyous at times and at others is frustrating, intentionally so, and had me yelling at the screen. Especially during the Fourth of July scene. "How could you, you bastard!?" I think were the exact words I shouted at my TV while my cats looked at me with complete confusion in their eyes, being awoken from their slumber. The pacing was g...

"The River Wild" Where I streamed it: "The Hollywood Suite" via Prime. "The River Wild" is about a family that gets stuck on a raft with a couple of bank robbers. Not only is this movie made by the director of 8 Mile but it also has an all-star cast of 90s Meryl Streep, 90s Kevin Bacon, 90s John C. Reilly, the kid from Jurassic Park and the most forgettable face in cinema, David Starthairn. The film takes a while to get going but once it does... IT'S PURE TENSION AND EXHILARATING WHITE WATER RAFTING UNDER EXTREME DURESS. However, it is not without flaws. There's some pretty stupid stuff going on here. For example (mild spoilers... doesn't really matter): David Strathairn's character is able to sprint non-stop over 2 mountains, then make his way down the river to get ahead of the boat that initially left him behind in the river and still have time to set up the most elaborately underwhelming booby trap ever. Not only is this unhumanly possib...

  "The Irishman" Very well written/shot/acted/directed. Scorsese sure knows what he's doing and this movie is a testament to his ever growing strength as a filmmaker. That being said it was extremely long and at times was quite boring. It left me with little to no desire to revisit any time soon although it did make me want to rewatch Goodfellas and Casino. It was exhausting despite it being a well made film. 6/10

I've been aware of it's existence for a while but was on the fence about watching it due to it's controversial nature. The film is undeniably problematic for obvious reasons... namely the title. While I do think that it is exploitative in certain regards I also think that it actually has its heart in the right place at times, keep in mind this was made in the 30s, a time when there were a lot of misallocated sentiments towards differently abled people and people with deformities. The film has a reputation due to being banned in many countries and "containing shocking scenes" but all in all it's kind of just a bland film with a kind of boring and simple story. I never knew that the "One of us!" chant came from this film. I don't really want to rate this film, so I won't. I will say that it's interesting to watch... not in a great way but also not in as bad a way as you might think.

The Girl Next Door, is not a teen comedy starring Emile Hirsch and Elisha Cuthbert, but rather a super depressing movie about a young girl who gets tortured and raped for almost the entire duration of the film. So this film is based on the book by Jack Ketchup who also re-wrote this book under the title "The Woman" which also was turned into a film by Lucky McGee. Keep in mind that the book is actually based on the real-life story of Gertrude Baniszewski ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Baniszewski ) who was a real life psycho bitch who actually tortured and killed a young girl with the help of the neighbourhood kids (including her own kids). This movie starts off with an adult David (played by William Atherton, the asshole reporter from Die Hard) reminiscing about pain and then jumping back to his childhood. The tone is hard to make out during the first 15-20 minutes as the lines are beyond corny as they try to make young "Davy" a cross between The Fonz and...